[quote=@Tatterdemalion][b]Adila![/b]

It’s... not what you expected. As you fast-forward, you see flashes of Hyperborea from above. You see devil-fortresses, and the first sun and moon. You see the Shadow War, as Eupheria’s nightmare army spreads whimsy and misrule across the land. You see Ouroboros wrapping herself around the world, seizing her tail in her mouth, shoring it up against the black and endless sea beyond. You see rainbows and the growth of mountains and fireworks and...

You see a cold and desolate wasteland, Argossa split down its trunk with black rot, its limbs drooping and broken. The sun and moon are gone. The stars shine unnaturally bright over the frozen desolation that once was a sea.

And then you’re in Hornet’s arms, and she’s holding you like she never intends to let you go. You’re on the edge of the wedding preparations, which are being made (slowly and clumsily) by Garthim on sorcerous autopilot. As long as you are very, very careful... you won’t activate their deep predatory instincts.

But Hornet’s just standing in plain sight, not moving a muscle, squeezing you tighter and tighter as one of them lumbers past, trailing white lilies from a large bag in its claws.[/quote]

Princess Adila feels very small. 

The enormity, the weight, the meaning of Argossa... everything it's seen, everything it means. She's known that the mysterious little island that she visited a [thousand years/months] ago had a connection to its roots, but this is the first time she's really gotten a glimpse as to what that [i]means[/i]. This is the axis around which the world turns, already ancient when the devil-grandmothers first beat the concept of time into the scales of the young earth. She couldn't bring it down if she gnawed upon its roots for the rest of time, but Oberon might do it within the week...

+Hornet?+ she murmurs, as small as she feels, wrapped up like a wyrmling in Hornet's arms. +Princess Hornet?+

There's no response. Oh no.

She screwed it up. She'd done exactly what she'd told Hornet not to do - she'd gotten distracted by the visions of the cosmos and had let go. She'd let the fate of the world distract her from her friend ([i]surely the scale justifies -[/i]) 

She doesn't let herself finish the thought before diving right back the way she came, closing her mind against the visions of midnight futures.